Late July, 2019 Garden

So, the smoke's arrived.

This shot was taken last evening.  There should be mountains visible out there.

This morning they still aren't there, but the sky directly above me is blue.  Weird.

And misleading.  I guess I'm breathing the ash and don't realize it.

The morning glories gave up yesterday.  They curled up in the morning instead of waiting for later in the day.  Maybe the smoke, maybe the heat.  Today they feel better and look fine.

It's hard enough to keep up on the squash bug checks in the garden, and now I have 

to add stink bug egg checks on the tomato leaves!  I found these today.  Interesting barrel shapes, don't you think?  While squash bugs are stink bugs, these are eggs to a different kind.  I never destroy eggs in my garden until after I look them up! 

 

Now, how about some nice things!

The "Dragon's Blood" sedum spurium is flowering.

 This may not look like much to you, but it's thrilling to me!

Garlic chives!

I grew these two from seed a year and a half ago (wintersown).  

Sure, I could have bought a pot of garlic chives for a few dollars and been done with it,

but it's fun and satisfying to grow from seed!

Here they are in March, 2018...

The most amazing blanketflower (gaillardia), "Fanfare."

I didn't plant the seeds, wasn't even aware of "Fanfare," but it's incredible!

It's blooming in the Butterfly Garden in with the regular (and now boring!) 

blanketflowers I did grow from seed.  The seeds were from a well-known source, so I am not 

sure how these seeds got in the package.  I guess they had a "Fanfare" in their garden too!  

The only other blanketflowers I have were in a mixed packet from the Dollar Tree, but they are not planted in this bed, and are blooming "normally." 

The anise hyssop is starting up in the Butterfly Garden...

Yet another type of flower from the Dollar Tree seed mix.  Some kind of balm I'm guessing, and "bee balm" was listed on the box.

Mexican red sunflower loves the heat, and I love the Mexican red sunflower!

Something new I did on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/lisasgardenadventure/?hl=en) with the Layout app 

  I call them The Sunshine Bunch!

From the upper left top, reading like text in a book, we have lance-leaf coreopsis, a different kind of lance-leaf coreopsis, black-eyed Susan, my favorite calendula (Dollar Tree mix), plains coreopsis (Dollar Tree mix), and UpTick™ coreopsis.  Too bad the red plains coreopsis finished already, I LOVE coreopsis, I think it's my favorite flower!  UpTick™ and lance-leaf (at least the first solid yellow) are perennials.  They also are so simple to propagate!  They self-seed, and spread themselves, but if you pull out a chunk while deadheading you can root that in water. 

Early Girl isn't early, but loaded with fruit.  So is the Garden Salsa pepper plant.

Lemon cucumbers are being left in the dust by White Wonder.  I have to verify this when more female blossoms appear, but today it looked like the male flowers on White Wonder are yellow, and the female white.  Or, today's was a fluke mutant.

I'll leave it at that.  Hope you all have a nice weekend, or had a nice Saturday (it's still Saturday morning in Oregon!).